by John Fahey

My version is based on the recording found on Fahey’s album The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album. I think this was the first recording he made of the piece, and he recorded it again several times over the years in slightly different arrangements. My transcription can be found below. I’ve tried to stay quite faithful to the original recording but in some instances I’ve slightly smoothed out some of the idiosyncrasies to make a readable, playable version. I’ve not written out the second verse in full as it’s more or less the same as the first with a few minor rhythmic variations. Be sure to play four steady thumb notes per bar, as this holds everything together.

I’m playing the melody notes mainly with my index and middle fingers, occasionally using my 3rd finger, but exactly how you do it is up to you. It sounds like Fahey is sometimes using his index finger to brush upwards and hit two strings at once and I’ve added these notes in brackets, for you to include if you want to. It’s very hard – for me, at least –  to reproduce Fahey’s technique exactly, so take this as a guide and don’t be afraid to do it your own way. It should all come together quite quickly if you’ve played pieces in this style before. If you’re new to fingerstyle guitar you might need to take it bar by bar, working on the coordination between thumb and fingers and paying attention to whether each melody note coincides with or falls between the bass notes. Feel free to simplify things, and concentrate on just the bass line and a single note melody line.

Here is the only video footage I could find of Fahey playing this piece. He’s not quite playing the piece in the same way as the original recording, but it’s an interesting watch, and useful to check out his right hand technique and to see which chord shapes he uses.

by The Undertones

In this lesson I look at the iconic punk-pop song Teenage Kicks. It’s quite easy to play, and a great one to learn if you’re just starting to get into barre chords and power chords. As usual, I take you through the basics before looking in a bit more detail at the finer points of the song, for those of you who want to play it just like the record. On the original, there are at least two guitars, which are essentially playing the same thing, but with minor differences in feel. I tend to play the song with a loose down-up strum in my picking hand, but it would probably work just as well with an aggressive all downstroke kind of approach. Feel free to experiment.

Below is a basic outline of the chords. To me, it sounds like all the chords are played as 6th string root barre or power chords. If you’re not familiar with these chord shapes you might like to check out a couple of basic barre chord lessons elsewhere on this site. Use the rhythm here as a guide as it varies a little bit throughout the song.

And here are the instrumental sections:

by Iron Butterfly

In this lesson I’m looking at a psychedelic rock classic from Iron Butterfly. Guitar on the original version was I think played by Erik Brann who was only 17 when he recorded it. But over the years the band went through a comically convoluted series of line-up changes, including over a dozen guitarists. (Just look at their Wikipedia page for a nerdy colour-coded bar graph of the myriad different members.) The original song is over 15 minutes long, taking up the entire second side of their In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida -Album, but I’m just concentrating on the main riff, which has long been a favourite of mine. It’s reasonably easy to play, and I’ve not much to add to what I say in the video here. It’s possible to play the riff in 3 or 4 different places on the neck, but I’m going with what feels and sounds right to my ears. There’s not much clear video footage of Brann himself playing it, so it’s hard to be 100% certain. I’ll leave the fingering up to you; I think I play everything with fingers 1, 2 and 3. There’s nothing particularly fast or technical here, so it can probably be played with mostly down strokes in the picking hand.

Getting The Sound

Much of the greatness of this riff resides in its guitar sound which is a raw, garage-y 60s fuzz tone. Any nasty sounding fuzz or distortion box should get you close but a Mosrite Fuzzrite was used on the original – a classic pedal also used by Johnny Ramone and Ron Asheton of The Stooges as well as being responsible for sounds heard on Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks. I’d love to have one, but they’re not cheap, and quite hard to come by these days. For this video I’m making do with a software version found inside Amplitube – obviously nowhere near as cool as the original, but still a useable sound. A few pedal makers seem to be making Fuzzrite copies these days which I might have to investigate.

I’ve tabbed out the various different riffs below. Download PDF here.

by Status Quo

Before they morphed into denim-clad boogiemeisters Status Quo were a late 60s psychedelic pop band, and this track is their most famous from that period. It’s a great song with a great riff, and it’s really easy to play. There seem to be at least a couple of different versions or mixes, and I prefer the one below which has the extra wah-wah guitar part and an overall more psychedelic sound.

Here’s some decent footage of The Quo playing the song. At the start of the clip you get a good view of Francis Rossi playing the main riff: all on the B string with downstrokes of the pick throughout. You also get to see how Rossi and Parfitt are playing the chords in different areas of the neck.

I’ve written out the main riff below:

And here’s a simple chord/lyric sheet for the entire song outlining the basic harmony. It’s up to you where you play the chords – probably best to just experiment and see what works best for you. If you’re a beginner, then most of it can be played with open chords in the first position and an easy F chord. If you know your barre chords, then there are plenty of options further up the neck. Download a PDF here should you wish.

Getting The Sound

As I say in the video, I’m not exactly sure what effects were used to get the guitar sound on the original – whether it’s an effects pedal or a tape-based studio technique. Maybe it’s both, as at certain points the effect is just on the guitar and at other times across the entire mix of the track. It sounds to me like some kind of phaser or flanger effect, and the entire guitar part could be double-tracked in places too. You can get quite close by using any phaser or flanger pedal and setting the rate or speed control quite slow.

If anyone knows exactly how the sound was acheived I’d really like to know, as there seems to be no definite information on the internet.